Am I the only person who loves to read about the dead of winter in the heat of summer?
I had come across this title on the blogosphere and it sounded soooo good: suspense, mystery, a young woman out to save a kidnapped child, an unknown perpetrator, all stuck at a rest stop during a blizzard! This story had many twists and turns and it kept me guessing until the last chapters.
I’ve never read a novel by Mr. Adams but he has several and they all look suspenseful! I enjoyed this one a lot and will look to read his others.
Highly recommended if you like this genre!
Here’s the overview from Amazon (where I purchased my kindle copy):
A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath.
A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?
On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she’s forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers.
Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm . . . and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.
Who is the child? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?
There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, and no way out. One of her fellow travelers is a kidnapper. But which one?
Trapped in an increasingly dangerous situation, with a child’s life and her own on the line, Darby must find a way to break the girl out of the van and escape.
But who can she trust?
With exquisitely controlled pacing, Taylor Adams diabolically ratchets up the tension with every page. Full of terrifying twists and hairpin turns, No Exit will have you on the edge of your seat and leave you breathless.
“T.M. Logan’s latest nail-biter…THE VACATION is a virtual holiday.”—Washington Post In The Vacation, a captivating thriller from T. M. Logan, the bestselling author of Lies and 29 Seconds, four best friends on a dream vacation come face-to-face with an explosive secret.
It was supposed to be the perfect getaway: Kate and her three best friends, spending a week with their families in a luxurious villa in the south of France. Through the decades they’ve stayed closer than ever, and seven days of drinking crisp French wine and laying out under the dazzling Mediterranean sun is the perfect celebration of their friendship. But soon after arriving, Kate discovers an incriminating text on her husband’s cell phone.
A text revealing that he’s having an affair.
And that the other woman is one of her best friends.
But which one?
Trapped in paradise with no one to trust, Kate is determined to find out who has put her marriage—and a lifelong friendship—in jeopardy. But as she closes in on the truth, she realizes that the stakes are higher than she ever imagined. Everyone on the trip has secrets…and someone may be prepared to kill to keep theirs hidden.
T.M. Logan is an amazing suspense writer, and I was thrilled to be able to get his latest book via Net Galley. The Vacation was super suspenseful — I could not put it down and read it all in one night! I loved the thrill of it and I really hope that they make it into a movie. (though aren’t books always better??)
I just loved this touching story from Harlequin that was partly historical fiction and partly “women’s fiction”. It was a sweet story with a happy ending and was a nice read during our COVID confinement. Gardens symbolize the eternalness of the seasons and the passing of life and the garden in this story stood for a life well-lived that had been dormant a little too long.
Description
In her inimitable style, Viola Shipman explores the unlikely relationship between two very different women brought together by the pain of war, but bonded by hope, purpose…and flowers.
Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family…of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive.
When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family—a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability—Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor’s life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live.
With delightful illustrations and fascinating detail, Viola Shipman’s heartwarming story will charm readers while resonating with issues that are so relevant today.
This is one my mother would have called “a nice story”. It made me cry.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read and share about it!
I’m so happy to take part in the blog tour for this suspenseful YA novel: The Summer I Drowned by Taylor Hale. This was one I could not put down. You know I love a good YA suspenseful mystery!
Here’s the overview:
Title: The Summer I Drowned
Author: Taylor Hale
Publisher: Wattpad Books
Release Date: May 26, 2020
Genre: Teens & YA
ISBN: 9781989365182
Price: $10.99 (USD)
Description:
Five years after almost drowning, Olivia Cathart returns home to Caldwell Beach determined to face her fears and take some risks—not just by swimming, but by opening her heart. Hoping to rekindle her friendships, she’s excited about a carefree summer with her best friends Keely and Miles. But life in the sleepy town has changed, and no one and nothing is as it seems.
When a series of startling crimes threaten Olivia’s fragile state, she is plunged into a terrifying game of cat and mouse. Her only solace from the chaos is West, Miles’s disowned and ruggedly handsome brother, but even he can’t answer the question on everyone’s minds—is Olivia really in danger or is it simply all in her head?
Author Bio:
Taylor Hale was born in Southwestern Ontario, and started writing on Wattpad in 2015. When she isn’t writing, she can be found bartending at a live music venue, and thinking up her next idea. The Summer I Drowned is her first novel.
Fun, fun, fun! I always like a book with a strong, female, teen protagonist. If I could have changed anything, I would have had less focus on the romance piece and more on the action. I also had a chuckle in that every character seemed to have a unique “smell” that I really haven’t found in real life, something like “He smelled like balsam and cinnamon”. “She smelled like vanilla and lavender”. “He smelled like ocean breeze and hickory”. Things like that. In real life I’m more inclined to say, “Mmmm – what’s that smell??”
Thank you for my copy and for having me as part of the tour! I would recommend this book for older YA readers due to sexual content and “heavy” content or potential triggers (e.g. drowning, relationship abuse, animal abuse, parental neglect, teen drinking, drinking and driving, sexual assault, etc.).
Author Tom Gabbay sent me a mobi of his new thriller, Access Point. Mr. Gabbay is well-known for his Jack Teller spy series. This was an almost sci-fi story — about a woman accessing her dead roommate’s memories in order to solve her murder. Creepy and suspenseful, I couldn’t help but think how this kind of stuff could be possible within the next 10-20 years!
Here’s the overview:
Wouldn’t we all want a second chance at life?
When young American art student Mia Fraser is brutally murdered steps away from her London house she shares with computer genius Ula Mishkin, it leaves the socially inept scientist heartbroken. When it becomes clear that Detective Sarah Boyd is making no progress in solving the crime using traditional methods, Ula creates a software program that allows her to reach into her dead housemate’s memory in order to reveal the identity of the killer. Entering the dead girl’s life through the echo of her memory, Ula learns that sometimes the past is best left undisturbed.
This was super suspenseful! I liked it but will admit that I sometimes struggled to figure out whose mind I was in – real time or memory time – and the chronology of the story. Chapter headings would have helped me, and it’s possible they are in the final edition (I read an ARC).
Thanks for sending me your new read, Mr. Gabbay!
Recommended to those who like a suspenseful story that borders on science fiction.
I’m here today to share with you a new Christian crime novel: Closer than She Knows by Kelly Irvin as part of the Partners in Crime blog tour!
Here’s the scoop!
Synopsis: A serial killer bent on revenge . . . and striking too close to home. Teagan O’Rourke has always loved murder mysteries. In her job as a court reporter, she has written official records for dozens of real-life murders. She’s slapped evidence stickers on crime scene photos. She’s listened to hours of chilling testimony. But she’s never known the smell of death. And she never thought she might be a victim.Until now.A young police officer is murdered just inches away from her, and then a man calling himself a serial killer starts leaving Teagan notes, signing each with the name of a different murderer from her favorite mystery novels.Panicked, Teagan turns to her friend Max Kennedy. Max longs for more than friendship with Teagan, but he fears she’ll never trust someone with a past like his. He wonders how much of God’s “tough love” he can take before he gives up on love completely. And he wonders if he’ll be able to keep Teagan alive long enough to find out.As Teagan, Max, and Teagan’s police officer father race to track down the elusive killer, they each know they could be the next victim. Desperate to save those she loves, Teagan battles fears that once haunted her in childhood. Nothing seems to stop this obsessed murderer. No matter what she does, he seems to be getting closer.
Book Details:Genre: Romantic Suspense Published by: Thomas Nelson Publication Date: June 9th 2020 Number of Pages: 352 ISBN: 0785231862 (ISBN13: 9780785231868) Purchase Links:Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
This was an interesting and fun read. I will say that it had some “triggers” in it — abduction and murder “off stage” and discussion of substance abuse and suicide — but overall it was what I call a “clean read”. The Christian thread was fairly strong in this story — the characters discussed their faith and prayed often. The main characters boyfriend was a youth minister. And I chuckled at times when just about every character would say things like “How is this affecting your faith?” or “Have you spoken to your pastor?” They were a faith-filled lot in this story! Even though I guessed who the perpetrator was, I still enjoyed the story and I always like an uplifting ending and a mystery that is not gory!!
Thank you for making me part of the tour and for my e-copy!
Author Bio:Kelly Irvin is a bestselling author and two-time Carol Award finalist. She is a former newspaper reporter and retired public relations professional. Kelly lives in Texas with her husband, photographer Tim Irvin. They have two children, three grandchildren, and two cats. Visit her Online: KellyIrvin.com Goodreads BookBub Instagram Twitter Facebook
But wait – there’s more!
GIVEAWAY: This is a rafflecopter giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Harper Collins and Kelly Irvin. There will be 1 winner of one (1) CLOSER THAN SHE KNOWS by Kelly Irvin (Print). The giveaway begins on June 22, 2020 and runs through July 26, 2020. Open to U.S. addresses only. Void where prohibited. Click to enter: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/ZjI0YmY4NGI1MjJkZDM3MDAyMmIxNWZhMzUxNTNkOjY3NA==/?
I’m thrilled to be part of the Harlequin Summer Reads blog tour for The Black Swan of Paris by Karen Robards. This was a riveting read of WWII Resistance, centering on two main characters, mother and daughter Lillian and Genevieve. Living in France, both of them were pulled into anti-Nazi activities, risking and often losing much of what they held dear. I couldn’t put it down! Ms. Robards is a new author to me, but I loved her writing and will look for her other novels.
Here’s the overview:
For fans of The Alice Network and The Lost Girls of Paris comes a thrilling standalone by New York Times bestselling author Karen Robards about a celebrated singer in WWII occupied France who joins the Resistance to save her estranged family from being killed in a German prison.
In Occupied France, the Resistance trembles on the brink of destruction. Its operatives, its secrets, its plans, all will be revealed. One of its leaders, wealthy aristocrat Baron Paul de Rocheford, has been killed in a raid and the surviving members of his cell, including his wife the elegant Baronness Lillian de Rocheford, have been arrested and transported to Germany for interrogation and, inevitably, execution.
Captain Max Ryan, British SOE, is given the job of penetrating the impregnable German prison where the Baroness and the remnants of the cell are being held and tortured. If they can’t be rescued he must kill them before they can give up their secrets.
Max is in Paris, currently living under a cover identity as a show business impresario whose star attraction is Genevieve Dumont. Young, beautiful Genevieve is the toast of Europe, an icon of the glittering entertainment world that the Nazis celebrate so that the arts can be seen to be thriving in the occupied territories under their rule.
What no one knows about Genevieve is that she is Lillian and Paul de Rocheford’s younger daughter. Her feelings toward her family are bitter since they were estranged twelve years ago. But when she finds out from Max just what his new assignment entails, old, long-buried feelings are rekindled and she knows that no matter what she can’t allow her mother to be killed, not by the Nazis and not by Max. She secretly establishes contact with those in the Resistance who can help her. Through them she is able to contact her sister Emmy, and the sisters put aside their estrangement to work together to rescue their mother.
It all hinges on a command performance that Genevieve is to give for a Gestapo General in the Bavarian town where her mother and the others are imprisoned. While Genevieve sings and the show goes on, a daring rescue is underway that involves terrible danger, heartbreaking choices, and the realization that some ties, like the love between a mother and her daughters and between sisters, are forever.
BIO:
Karen Robards is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than fifty novels and one novella. She is the winner of six Silver Pen awards and numerous other awards.
I’m happy to finally be able to share a great summer read by one of my fave authors: B.A. Paris’ The Dilemma. I received this book months ago from St. Martin’s Press via Net Galley. (thank you!!).
In this novel, two people are keeping secrets in order to keep others blindly happy, but their worlds are about to come tumbling down. Don’t want to say more and give anything away!
This story was a bit different from B.A. Paris’ last ones. I loved the suspense of her earlier works and the intensity. This is more a story with psychological suspense, but it’s heart-breaking, and it touches on the base elements of family life and relationships. I really liked it and read it in one evening because I couldn’t put it down.
(via Amazon)
Knowing the truth will destroy her. Keeping it secret will destroy him.
It’s Livia’s 40th birthday, and her husband Adam is throwing her the party of a lifetime to make up for the wedding they never had. Everyone she loves will be there, except her daughter Marnie, who’s studying abroad. But Livia is secretly glad Marnie won’t be there.
Livia has recently uncovered a secret about their daughter which, if revealed, will shake the foundation of their family to its core. She needs to tell Adam, but she’s waiting until the party is over so they can have this last happy time together.
Adam, meanwhile, has his own surprise for Livia: he’s arranged for Marnie to secretly fly back for the party. But before Marnie arrives, Adam hears some terrible news. Now he too is faced with a dilemma: Does he share what he’s learned with his wife? Is hiding the truth the same as telling a lie? And how far are Adam and Livia willing to go to protect the ones they love―and give each other a last few hours of happiness?
This book published today – June 30, 2020. It’s a great summer read!
I am so happy to share with you a novel that I was offered as part of the blog tour for Donna Hemans wonderful new book: Tea by the Sea. This is a touching, memorable, and at times heart-breaking story about a young woman and the choices we make, as well as the choices that are sometimes made for us.
Here’s the overview from Over the River publicity:
A seventeen-year-old taken from her mother at birth, an Episcopal priest with a daughter whose face he cannot bear to see, a mother weary of searching for her lost child: Tea by the Sea is their story—that of a family uniting and unraveling. To find the daughter taken from her, Plum Valentine must find the child’s father who walked out of a hospital with the day-old baby girl without explanation. Seventeen years later, weary of her unfruitful search, Plum sees an article in a community newspaper with a photo of the man for whom she has spent half her life searching. He has become an Episcopal priest. Her plan: confront him and walk away with the daughter he took from her. From Brooklyn to the island of Jamaica, Tea by the Sea traces Plum’s circuitous route to finding her daughter and how Plum’s and the priest’s love came apart.
As I read this novel, my heart was breaking for poor Plum, a young girl who made some wrong choices but was made to pay for them in a most terrible way. She never gave up searching and hoping to be reunited with her daughter. At the same time, you could have a great bookclub discussion over Lenworth. His choices and decisions and the fact that he was pretty much purely motivated by selfish desires made him not very likable in my eyes. Even the fact that he took the baby for Plum’s “best interests” seems like one those things that people tell themselves they are doing to help others, but are only helping themselves.
Donna Hemans is a new author to me, but I’m so happy that I have enjoyed her work and will look for more by her!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jamaican-born Donna Hemans is the author of the novel River Woman, winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature. TEA BY THE SEA, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her second novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, and the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She received her undergraduate degree from Fordham University and an MFA from American University. She lives in Maryland.
But wait! There’s more!
There’s a giveaway with this blog tour! If you live in the US and/or Caribbean, you can enter to win a FREE COPY OF THE NOVEL and a BAG OF TEA THAT HAS BEEN CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR THIS BOOK LAUNCH. To enter, please write a comment on this blog post or post a comment under this post on Facebook. I will number the comments (starting with the blog post and then adding the Facebook posts) and then randomly choose a number via Random.org as the winner. Deadline to enter is 7/7!!
I want to win! I drink tea every day!! I’m hoping that one of my friends wins this so I can share it with them!
I hope that you enjoy this novel as much as I did. Thank you for having me as part of the tour and for my e-copy.
Friends — The mood in our country during the last weeks has varied from anxiety to outrage to anger to solidarity, from hate to support, depending on who and where you are. One month ago today George Floyd died. I find that interest peaks right after horrific events like these, but then many people move on with their lives, so I specifically waited to create this post.
This post is dedicated to all those readers who feel unsure of how they can make a difference. I have friends who are afraid to ask: “What can I do?” They are afraid to ask: “Why do people say Black Lives Matter?” They are confused about the term “white privilege” because they didn’t grow up wealthy. They are taken aback when they are told that being “colorblind” is not a good thing – or even a thing at all. They are people who do not consider themselves racist but worry, “What if I am?” If I had to guess, they are people who probably identify as white and probably grew up in a setting where most people were just like them.
People – believe me when I say: we have work to do.
We have work to do to understand white privilege – what it is and how it has affected us and others. We have work to do to understand institutional racism and also implicit bias. We have work to do to understand how we can create a difference and work towards equity and inclusion. Know that it’s okay to say “I don’t know” or even “I used to think differently”. As a white cisgender middle class woman I can tell you that my experience has been that the more I learn, the more that I find out I don’t know!
For this post I wanted to share books that I read that made a difference for me in educating myself and growing my awareness of white privilege, racism, hidden biases, and how these relate to my job as a teacher (and as a white teacher of children of color). THIS IS NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST! I’m sure there are many other wonderful books out there and please feel free to share them in the comments.
This list is dedicated to those who don’t know, but want to try to do better.
Debby Irving’s Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race was a book that I really related to. When your world is white, you sometimes don’t even think of yourself as having a race. I read this two years ago but I’m listening to it again on audio with my teenage daughter.
Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin Banaji is a fascinating read, focusing on “good people” who can have biases hidden deep within themselves, and Banaji’s research on this. I love this title and focus on the fact that these are people who would say “I’m not a racist”. We tend to think of “racists” as loud-mouthed, cruel, and ignorant. Banaji shows that even the best of us can carry biases within.
So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo is our faculty read this year. The focus is on open and honest conversations and race and racism. I’m reading it now.
Whistling Vivaldi: How Sterotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do by Claude M. Steele is all about understanding stereotypes, especially in America. I read this last summer for our faculty read and will never forget where this title comes from. The author found that some people reacted to him with fear as they passed him on the street, especially at night, for no other reason than he was a Black male. So he started whistling Vivaldi.
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin Di Angelo and Michael Eric Dyson. I read this several years ago. Again, eye opening and easy to read and informative.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Daniels Tatum. It’s a classic and I believe it has a new foreward to it.
The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys by Ali Michael, Eddie Moore, et al. I received this book after attending a diversity conference. I’ve spent 30 years teaching in independent schools and can say that, in my opinion and experience (which is shared by many), Black boys are our most at-risk students.
If you are on Facebook, I follow former colleague Jenna Chandler Ward’s Teaching While White. I believe it is also a podcast.
This summer my kids, who are both in high school, have summer reading of Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. My own students are reading (as they always do) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I look foward to reading her newer books as well.
So — these are a sampling of books for those of us who know that we don’t know everything about racism and white privilege. It’s a start. But it’s also a start that has no ending in sight. We owe it to our Black and Brown friends, to all our friends, to educate ourselves and to strive to make a better tomorrow.
If you have resources to share, please do so in the comments. Please also know that every comment has to be vetted and approved by me before it will show publicly.
Author Bio:Kelly Irvin is a bestselling author and two-time Carol Award finalist. She is a former newspaper reporter and retired public relations professional. Kelly lives in Texas with her husband, photographer Tim Irvin. They have two children, three grandchildren, and two cats.
Beth's Book-Nook Blog 